Let us look now at those who call themselves ‘conservation hunters’. They say that hunting stimulates the growth of game farms and that makes them conservationists. We would analyse the logic of that argument as follows:
All cats have four legs.
My dog has four legs.
Therefore my dog is a cat.

We believe that Africa has a spirit which is unlike any other place on earth; that this spirit is infused into everything indigenous and natural and that when we destroy these things, we are destroying the spirit of our own after-lives. For when there is no cosmic and brooding spirit left around us, where will our spirits go when we die? In fact, we will confound the rocket scientists by bringing Mars back to Earth, creating a lifeless, barren desert occupied now only by the harsh scouring winds and the marching ranks of sand dunes which they drive before them, with only the dried-up watercourses to betray that our Mars continent was once a rich, bountiful and spiritual Eden.

* * *

Can you feel through all this static
This void within your dreaming.
An empty house of bleak neglect
For a life that has no meaning.
Turn to walk through cardboard dreams
A drab landscape with no depth.
Laugh with all your damaged toys
The pain behind each breath.
The veils of doubt your only friends
Embrace you in their sadness,
And speak of things that fade with time
Whispered through this madness.

– Andrew Mercer

Commissioner Douglas Shulman March 22, 2009

Internal Revenue Service

Fresno, CA 93888

Dear Commissioner Shulman

Safari Club International/Wrongful Exemption

I would like to address Safari Club International (SCI henceforth) whose mailing address is 4800 West Gates Pass Rd, Tucson, AZ 85745-9490, by asking that you review their current tax status. In 1985, after several pressured appeals by SCI and politically high profile SCI members including the Bush and Cheney families, the Internal Revenue Service decided that it is an entity organized for exclusively charitable and educational purposes, thus granting it 501 (c) (3) status.

SCI’s main purpose is to promote trophy hunting; the mounting of (oftentimes endangered animal) heads above fireplace mantels and skins adorning hardwood floors. This is advocated not only to adults but children as well. When a person lists SCI as a beneficiary in their will, the proceeds, as SCI literature states, will “Provide a source of revenue to further the goals and mission of SCI.” This would include their broadening of such programs as “sensory safaris” for the blind where children are ushered through their museum to stroke the soft fur of mounted animals in order to ‘explore the wonders of nature.’ The hunters who have killed these animals are allowed to write off their hunting expenses and SCI actually has lawyers to assist, in this, what I deem outrageous. There’s more, but I believe this bit of information provides a starting point.

It is illogical that SCI be granted inclusion with organizations such as Sisters of Charity, the Humane Society and others that promote goodness and help people and teach them to be decent and caring.

Respectfully,

Steve Tyler

2564 Franki St

Orange, CA 92865

This little exchange of emails is so comical that I just had to share it.
Friends from England, perhaps inspired by our book Kalahari Dream (http://design-a-webpage.com/node/103) decided to visit the Kalahari. They found on the Internet a tourist Lodge that looked appealing. The reservation process was going fine until our friends – call them tourists – discovered that the lodge was on a hunting farm (of which there are more than 9000 in South Africa. The following email exchange then took place:
Tourist to Lodge: ‘It looks really beautiful – but we could not stay there as we support
animal welfare, and could not consider booking into anywhere that supported hunting.’
Lodge to Tourists: ‘Sorry to You, but in the Kalahari, hunting is part of our life as drugs and
sex is part of your life in the City!’
Tourist: ‘By the way I am 70 years of age and sex & drugs are not part of my every
day life!!

After we had picked ourselves up from the floor and recovered from our mirth, Bev and I decided that our friends had missed the chance to exploit the implication that, in the Kalahari, hunting is the substitute for sex and drugs. We would have responded to the lodge: ‘We are sorry to hear of your inability to enjoy sex or drugs, and suggest that a course of Viagra would resolve both problems, and might be more effective than hunting.’ 